This isn't really a request from the BYOND staff, but more of a request for their permission before I go making this and then they get all pissy =P
ByondHub.com will basically be a replica of the hub section of BYOND. Just a list of games and their descriptions and server info (The Overview and Now Live tabs). Though it will be displayed in the old fashion, with this info on a single page. The site won't have any forums or user pages etc. Though it will probably have a link to download the BYOND software and of course links back to BYOND.com.
Users will be able to submit any hub entry from BYOND to this site, however each hub entry will only be able to be submitted a single time. The main goal of this new site is to A. Instead of advertising for 1,000 spam anime rips, provide more players to the games that are actually original. B. To provide a ranking system which is actually balanced and fair, since the one on BYOND is far from it. C. To either have an ad-free environment, or to at least provide ads that don't completely destroy the integrity of hub entries.
Once a game has been submitted it will be displayed until approved or denied, then regardless of its approval or denial it won't be able to be re-submitted. Approved games will of course be displayed, and denied ones will basically be black-listed.
Mainly I want to know how interested the BYOND community and staff would be in the project.
Since the BYOND staff claim that most of their income comes from the Ads, I have no problem having ads on this new site and giving them 100% income from said ads, since the site won't really cost me anything to run ($6 a year). And if the BYOND staff would be willing to provide the information/access required to allow BYOND users to directly log in through the new site, though it wouldn't be necessary.
ID:133092
 Apr 17 2009, 7:20 pm (Edited on Apr 17 2009, 7:26 pm)
|
|
Tom wrote:
My opinion is that this is counterproductive. Everything in BYOND is setup to route people through the official hub (and there will be more of this in the next release). From a technical POV, a separate hub is limited without access to the db (and I will not approve automatic datamining of our site). You are free to make your own "top games" site and have users submit to it, so long as you don't imply that it is officially endorsed by us. This is, interestingly enough, basically what a guild is supposed to do (although if you have a problem with our hub layout, then I guess that doesn't fix the problem for you). Using the &format=text tag I should be able to create an exact replica (which is pretty much the goal, I have no major complaints about your current layout) of the BYOND hub. A user of the new site would just submit the hub address (ie: Falacy/DragonBallZHeroesUnited) which would then be added to our database and displayed to viewers while under review. I appreciate what you are trying to do here. For a while you and others have fought for better representation of original games. And I would like to help. Of course I'm not thrilled that we've basically evolved into an Anime hub. But our hands are somewhat tied, because currently our income is directly connected to this niche userbase. I think this is hurting our long-term prospects (nevermind "my own net dream"), and I'm working on ways we can possibly split into sister sites to fix this, but we just can't just abandon what we have. Maybe we can improve it though. I have no problem at all with you being an anime hub, I have a problem with you being a rip hub. If every one of those anime games was custom built by the owner; then they'd all at least be worth checking out. As it stands now 99% of them are rips of the same few sources, so having 50 of the same game doesn't make much sense. Instead of having 10 games with 5 players each, you could just offer 1 game with 50 players. They're gonna be the exact same game anyway. The rankings are simply a popularity contest among our current audience; I don't know how we can make this more fair. Like I said in the above post, the only place where the rips really dominate is in the game search, and maybe we can do something about that. If they are showing up in the main listings, it is because people are playing them (and things are being sorted by #players). Currently, a game marked as a favorite of one of a few "top" guilds gets major rank preference over others. And adding screen shots also provides a pretty major rank boost. If nothing else, there should at least be an option to sort by unweighted popularity. I think we're going to have a problem promoting "good" games until we change the audience. As it stands, we have plenty of original games that are ranked highly by our users, show up in the banners & front page, and still never get played (just go to the first listing page, sorted by the default "popularity", and see how many games have 0 players). It was my hope in designing this system that by giving these games lots of exposure they'd get more players, but it hasn't happened. And that's because our audience is not interested in them. Putting them on a separate site isn't going to fix this. Hiding games we don't like isn't going to fix this (we'll just lose players for those games). I'm certainly open to ideas. I've stated before that I don't think it's productive to have the "rip police" go around and approve games, because it's very ambiguous what makes something original. The problem with most of those original games is that they either aren't designed for multiplayer at all, or they're designed for very low player counts. OR the games are designed for multiplayer ONLY, which if anything drives off players more than it invites them. The only original game that I can think of thats really geared towards a large player count is Seika. Even if I were to design a DBZ based RTS game, its not going to get 100 people on it, its just not designed to have that many players around. Not to mention alot of the RTS type games on BYOND I prefer to play alone/offline; which brings us to this: Maybe you could display what games people are playing even if those games aren't being hosted. Sort of like the Now Waiting list. "Now Playing" would show who is in a single player instance of the game. | |
Maybe instead of having head guilds; when creating/editing a hub entry it could just have an option for what section you want it in. The 5 you have now, along with one for rips, and an unclassified one for people who can't decide. You would only be able to have your game in 1 of the categories so people would be forced to choose. And any obvious rip games found in non-rip categories could either be deleted or moved. Hopefully BYOND players aren't purposely searching around for rips <.<
| |
Quite a lot do, I suspect. Playing with friends, play a similar game with slightly cooler items, slightly better admins etc.
| |
Stephen001 wrote:
Quite a lot do, I suspect. Playing with friends, play a similar game with slightly cooler items, slightly better admins etc. You fail at life | |
Yeah pretty much, but I tend to win at internets. However I don't think either of these last two posts were awesomely relevant. What I meant to point out was that this "rip problem" is more social than anything. BYOND Anime seems to have done an alright job of making people feel that ripping is bad, however now it's gone from being seen as necessary to make an Anime game, to a necessary evil involved in making an Anime game.
I have a feeling that no amount of re-arranging on BYOND's part with the site is going to ultimately change the way people approach Anime themed BYOND games. | |
Stephen001 wrote:
BYOND Anime seems to have done an alright job of making people feel that ripping is bad, however now it's gone from being seen as necessary to make an Anime game, to a necessary evil involved in making an Anime game. lol yea their policy of "no rips unless you mod them" is clearly scaring off all the rippers. I have a feeling that no amount of re-arranging on BYOND's part with the site is going to ultimately change th way people approach Anime themed BYOND games. There are probably 150+ rips live right now (out of 197 games). 100+ of which have 5 or less players. Why are we spamming up the hub with low-player counted repeat rip games, instead of displaying decent games that deserve to be getting more players in them? At very least it'd be a hell of a lot easier to find those decent games if there weren't 10 rips posted between every one of them. | |
I don't think I said anyone's policy was scaring off anyone, in fact I think I said the opposite through my "necessary evil" comment.
As for the now live thing (drop-down, Anime, browse the default "Now Live" listing), most of those games on that front page have 10 - 80 players on them currently. The two games that came before GOA on that listing seemed a little odd to me. Considering the mess BYOND Anime has made of their listings in the past, I hope you can appreciate original/not-original is not a black and white affair in a lot of the userbases eyes, hence Tom spoke of the dangers of playing "rip police". I'm sure BYOND is open to site changes if you can provide some walk-through of how you think people browse the site, get to games etc. Doubly so if you can provide some feedback from new users. However the staff don't have magic bullets, there is a limit to the changes they can reasonably make without just annoying a good part of their userbase (Anime or not). BYOND gets pretty consistently hammered every time there is a site change, and unfortunately a lot of that flak comes without decent explanation and case study so that BYOND can improve. You're a decent developer, I'm sure you can walk them through how you think the site is used, in a rich and meaningful manner. | |
Falacy wrote:
You fail at life Quoth the great Phil Ken Sebben, "Ha ha!" | |
Stephen001 wrote:
I'm sure BYOND is open to site changes if you can provide some walk-through of how you think people browse the site, get to games etc. Doubly so if you can provide some feedback from new users. Lets find out! ([link]) | |
Falacy wrote:
Stephen001 wrote: To quote yourself... Falacy wrote: At least you got one reply! :) Really, I agree with Tom, it's counterproductive. Android Data tried this once, no one used it, and it eventually fizzled out. Why should we use YOUR Byond Hub if there's one already available? | |
Flame Sage wrote:
Why should we use YOUR Byond Hub if there's one already available? Because mine will actually have some standards? | |
You know, you can put on filters to the game search on the HUB to get rid of most of the rips and other stuff.
| |
ANiChowy wrote:
You know, you can put on filters to the game search on the HUB to get rid of most of the rips and other stuff. And that "other stuff" includes pretty much all anime games in the process of removing the rips. As I said, I don't have a problem with them advertising fan-games, only advertising crap-rips. | |
|
#15 Apr 19 2009, 1:05 am
|
|
Whatever you do end up doing, realize that by naming the site 'byondhub.com' you affiliate your site strongly with this one, which breaks the one condition on this: Don't imply the website is an official, BYOND-endorsed website.
Really, I have to echo what has already been said here. People don't care if a game is ripped or not - They care whether its a good game or not. If its good in their opinion, they will play it. The only potential players you lose from the current situation are those who stumble into games that are bad and then leave BYOND as a whole afterwards. I'm just not sure thats very many people at all. However, a hub with almost no games and no official tie to byond.com is scarcely going to generate enough traffic to be worth it on its own. However, thats your headache not mine ;) | |
Alathon wrote:
They care whether its a good game or not. If its good in their opinion, they will play it. The only potential players you lose from the current situation are those who stumble into games that are bad and then leave BYOND as a whole afterwards. I'm just not sure thats very many people at all. No, you end up with 'noob A' trying rip #500 as his first game and thinks, "WOW THIS IS SO COOL", while 'noob B' logs in to rip #1,000 and thinks "WOW THIS IS SO COOL", instead of both of them just logging in to and playing the game that was ripped to begin with. However, a hub with almost no games and no official tie to byond.com is scarcely going to generate enough traffic to be worth it on its own. However, thats your headache not mine ;) It would/could/should have ALL the good/original games from BYOND. If you consider that "almost no games" then I guess its saying something for the community here. | |
Falacy wrote:
Alathon wrote: Explain to me how this is bad, exactly? You have two players playing something they think is cool. Using BYOND? Check Playing a game? Check Having fun? Check However, a hub with almost no games and no official tie to byond.com is scarcely going to generate enough traffic to be worth it on its own. However, thats your headache not mine ;) You seem to be assuming that everyone on BYOND will suddenly see your website and decide to list their game there. I'm not sure why that would be the case, really - Your hub has far less functionality than this one, far less visitors. Theres absolutely no gain. As has already also been mentioned, this has been attempted in the past and ended in failure. I salute the idea of helping BYOND move outside these walls, I really just don't think this is the way. I guess I don't see what you're trying to solve here - You mainly seem to be concerned with BYOND Anime. Is it not a better solution to voice your concern over the quality or nature of games admitted to BYOND Anime, in the BYOND Anime forums, than to have to create an entire hub to essentially do the same? | |
Alathon wrote:
Explain to me how this is bad, exactly? You have two players playing something they think is cool. Some ripper getting credit for work that's not theirs? Check Games that deserve players losing players? Check Having fun with 5 players instead of 50? Check You seem to be assuming that everyone on BYOND will suddenly see your website and decide to list their game there. I'm not sure why that would be the case, really - Your hub has far less functionality than this one, far less visitors. Theres absolutely no gain. As has already also been mentioned, this has been attempted in the past and ended in failure. It would basically have the same functionality that this one does as far as searching for and joining games goes. Users would only submit hub entries that were already created here on BYOND to the new site, its not like all the developers here would have to go there and remake their hub entries, quite the opposite really. I salute the idea of helping BYOND move outside these walls, I really just don't think this is the way. I guess I don't see what you're trying to solve here - You mainly seem to be concerned with BYOND Anime. Is it not a better solution to voice your concern over the quality or nature of games admitted to BYOND Anime, in the BYOND Anime forums, than to have to create an entire hub to essentially do the same? BYOND Anime compared to the All Games section is somewhat of an improvement. They may still have a few rips, and have some poorly designed, barely followed, guidelines for what games they allow. But my biggest problem is with BYOND providing blatant support to rippers. They police the forums as though the world would end if one little thing slips by, but the hub is basically ignored by the entirety of the staff. If my site catches on, even if its only getting a few hundred out of the few thousand users here. If nothing else, the BYOND staff would be able to look at it and see what they SHOULD be doing in place of what they're doing now. | |
Falacy wrote:
Alathon wrote: Some ripper getting credit for work that's not theirs? Check I see; you mean like stealing intellectual property from Funimation to create a game that will draw more players than original design and storyline would? I get your point, but I really don't think you have a high moral ground here. People getting tricked into releasing their source or what have you is a sad situation. But ultimately its not possible to police, as has been said ad nauseum already. A game that deserves players losing players? Check This is not the case at all. If my game fails to draw in players, thats my fault. Likewise for you, and anyone else. People play what they want, not what is morally correct - The majority do, anyhow. A game losing players to a rip that does absolutely NO advertising for itself out of its hub entry, has itself to blame. Having fun with 5 players instead of with 50? Check Why is that bad? Really, I don't get why thats bad. You seem to be assuming that everyone on BYOND will suddenly see your website and decide to list their game there. I'm not sure why that would be the case, really - Your hub has far less functionality than this one, far less visitors. Theres absolutely no gain. As has already also been mentioned, this has been attempted in the past and ended in failure. Oh, be very careful here. You do realize that you need permission to list that content, right? But my biggest problem is with BYOND providing blatant support to rippers. They police the forums as though the world would end if one little thing slips by, but the hub is basically ignored by the entirety of the staff. Say, what? So now BYOND is supporting rippers? We're ignoring the hub? Egh, okay then. The entire guild system was put into place to better help sort content for players. At the time, it was created because there were so many stolen and copied anime games that it flooded the hub. This, as you've alluded to yourself, is no longer the case in BYOND Anime. And really, I don't particularly see any epidemic of rips flooding the hub, that aren't anime games. Do you? I think you're trying to solve a phantom problem, or you aren't doing a good enough job of actually showing where the problem is and what it actually is. If my site catches on, even if its only getting a few hundred out of the few thousand users here. If nothing else, the BYOND staff would be able to look at it and see what they SHOULD be doing in place of what they're doing now. If the site only gets a few hundred users, I'd say thats a good voucher of what not to do. We already feature games to expose solid games; and we do lots of other things, like highlight them in blog posts and provide better incentives for the good games to make themselves noticed. So your notion that we don't look at the hub at all is beyond ridiculous. You're making the mistake of assuming that an entire staff of Moderators and the people behind BYOND are stupid and unable to see all of these issues you think are present. However, you present an idealistic view of how things should be that fails to take consequences in many other areas into account. You also fail to address the basic notion of: How does this help players in any way, or BYOND for that matter? The more players you collect in the same area, the more they socialize - And consequently, the more they will be playing games together. By attempting to spread players out more, you're detracting from player retention. This, ironically, has been one of the key issues with guilds. One that we're looking into ways to solve. | |
I appreciate what you are trying to do here. For a while you and others have fought for better representation of original games. And I would like to help. Of course I'm not thrilled that we've basically evolved into an Anime hub. But our hands are somewhat tied, because currently our income is directly connected to this niche userbase. I think this is hurting our long-term prospects (nevermind "my own net dream"), and I'm working on ways we can possibly split into sister sites to fix this, but we just can't just abandon what we have. Maybe we can improve it though.
From a technical and layout POV, I don't think the current hub is bad at all. The main thing people are interested in is getting into games (and maybe seeing if their friends are playing them), and we make that information most accessible.
Your main complaint seems to be that the hub is filled with rips, which it is. I addressed that in your earlier post on this subject, [link]. Basically, I view the hub as an index, rather than a list of stuff we promote. Indeed, we only run banners for stuff that is allegedly "quality" (as determined by our top users) and our front page listings reflect this. The rankings are simply a popularity contest among our current audience; I don't know how we can make this more fair. Like I said in the above post, the only place where the rips really dominate is in the game search, and maybe we can do something about that. If they are showing up in the main listings, it is because people are playing them (and things are being sorted by #players).
I think we're going to have a problem promoting "good" games until we change the audience. As it stands, we have plenty of original games that are ranked highly by our users, show up in the banners & front page, and still never get played (just go to the first listing page, sorted by the default "popularity", and see how many games have 0 players). It was my hope in designing this system that by giving these games lots of exposure they'd get more players, but it hasn't happened. And that's because our audience is not interested in them. Putting them on a separate site isn't going to fix this. Hiding games we don't like isn't going to fix this (we'll just lose players for those games). I'm certainly open to ideas. I've stated before that I don't think it's productive to have the "rip police" go around and approve games, because it's very ambiguous what makes something original.
IMO, the only way to fix this is to drive new people from outside BYOND into original games and hope they stick around. It may be the case that our current site and/or players are turning these users off (due to the predominance of Anime). It's hard to say since we've never really advertised, but it wouldn't be surprising. That is a deeper problem, but my thinking is that if sites like BYOND Strategy, Casual, etc were a little more standalone and advertised independently, to attract users of those genres, we might be able to lose the whole Anime stigma.